Kings Never Die
by RachelGoldberg
Summary: Quinn never should have heard it. She doesn't make a habit of eavesdropping on conversations, especially not on set. But Rachel shoved her away, Quinn had yet another fruitless conversation with fucking Coleman, and now she's here. Ear pressed to Rachel's office door like a goddamned flyover state housewife.


Quinn never should have heard it.

She doesn't make a habit of eavesdropping on conversations, especially not on set. God knows she has no interest in knowing the intimate details of her underlings' lives, or worse, her contestants'. But Rachel shoved her away, Quinn had yet another fruitless conversation with fucking Coleman, and now she's here. Ear pressed to Rachel's office door like a goddamn flyover state housewife.

"I haven't been that person since the day it happened."

She remembers, quite distinctly, the first time she saw Rachel under the influence of her mother.

 _Glazed-eyed, Rachel flopped onto Quinn's couch. Oddly devoid of emotion, sparkle, tenacity, or any of the multitude of qualities Quinn had come to associate with Rachel (not that she'd ruminated over it, or anything), Rachel's shadowy presence startled her._

 _"The fuck, Goldie? You miss two weeks of preproduction meetings and leave me to deal with budgets and fucking Graham's asinine requests on my own? I'm going to need more than a vague 'emotional crisis' bullshit explanation to keep me from firing your ass." Quinn vented, if only in an attempt to wrangle some sort of SOMETHING from Rachel's impassive countenance._

 _Rachel remained flat. Unaffected._

 _"Fuck you, Quinn, you'd never fire me and you know it."_

 _Quinn knew it._

 _"What's going on with you, Goldberg?" It was more an exasperated jab than a question, but Quinn anticipated Rachel's response nevertheless._

 _"More than you want to deal with. You couldn't handle me, Quinn"_

 _Quinn thought handling Rachel may involve tongs and industrial strength oven mitts, she burns so intensely. But she could. Handle her, that is._

 _She fixed Rachel with a calculating stare. A challenge. Daring her to make the effort and push past the tentative friendship struggling beneath their tumultuous work relationship. Whether the two of them enjoyed it or not, they were more alike than they cared to admit. Similarities didn't require admission to draw the two together, however._

 _Rachel folded, if only hesitantly; the weight of her stress and anxiety too much to hold onto in the relative safety of Quinn's presence. Eyes still hauntingly empty stared through Quinn as if she were a ghost of a person (which, the cold pit in her stomach is leading her to believe she may be), frustration and anger spewing from Rachel's long-silenced lips. Words sparking something in Quinn, something she couldn't acknowledge, much less identify._

 _Quinn kept her stoic mask, soft "hmm"s of compassion the only betrayal of her neutral demeanor. Though internally, a fire was raging as straight white teeth dug into her cheek._

 _She swallowed the blood, and the fear._

Quinn had come to understand that she could handle Rachel. At her worst, at her best. The two women had come to an unspoken agreement, even if neither understood what it really was.

Quinn could handle it.

But what Quinn certainly can't handle is the careful, calculated prodding of Dr. Goldberg at Rachel's most vulnerable places, her words tearing through Rachel but slamming into Quinn like a gale force wind of blame and disgust.

"No one wants to deal with that kind of damage, Rachel. No one."

Quinn stays; thin fingers pressed hesitantly against the rough wood grain of Rachel's office door.

Long after the outside door closes and Rachel's mother leaves her daughter catatonic and reeling in her own goddamned office, Quinn stays.

When Rachel's sobs start, deep gulping breaths of air as if she were bursting from the depths, starving for oxygen and relief, Quinn stays.

 _Because no one will love you if they find out._

If she were anyone else, Quinn could walk into the room and offer her slender, tanned shoulder to cry on. Tell Rachel that she was beautiful and intelligent and so worthy of love. [Quinn's love.] If she were anyone but Quinn King she could express to Rachel that Rachel alone is worth the world, probably.

But talking to Rachel would mean relinquishing the last shred of control she clings to like a slowly deflating life preserver. Talking to Rachel would mean lowering the large, fortified barricades that Quinn has so carefully erected around herself.

And Quinn King doesn't acquiesce to anyone.

So instead, she turns away from the sound of Rachel's staccatoed, hiccuped breathing to return to the desolate safety of her office and a gifted bottle of aged scotch.

Tonight, Quinn King practices the fine arts of denial and suppression.

Tonight, she answers to herself and herself alone.


End file.
